The background of my question comes from an observation that what we teach in schools does not always reflect what we practice. Beauty is part of what drives mathematicians, but we rarely talk about beauty in the teaching of school mathematics.

I'm trying to collect examples of good, accessible proofs that could be used in middle school or high school. Here are two that I have come across thus far:

(1) Pick's Theorem: The area, A, of a lattice polygon, with boundary points B and interior points I is A = I + B/2 - 1.

I'm actually not so interested in verifying the theorem (sometimes given as a middle school task) but in actually proving it. There are a few nice proofs floating around, like one given in "Proofs from the Book" which uses a clever application of Euler's formula. A very different, but also clever proof, which Bjorn Poonen was kind enough to show to me, uses a double counting of angle measures, around each vertex and also around the boundary. Both of these proofs involve math that doesn't go much beyond the high school level, and they feel like real mathematics.

Again, I'm not interested in the proof for verification purposes, but for a beautiful, enlightening proof. I came across such a proof by Grunbaum and Shepard in Mathematics Magazine. They use what they call the Area Principle, which compares the areas of triangles that share the same base (I would like to insert a figure here, but I do not know how. -- given triangles ABC and DBC and the point P that lies at the intersection of AD and BC, AP/PD = Area (ABC)/Area(DBC).) This principle is great-- with it, you can knock out Menelaus, Ceva's, and a similar theorem involving pentagons. And it is not hard-- I think that an average high school student could follow it; and a clever student might be able to discover this principle themselves.

Anyway, I'd be grateful for any more examples like these. I'd also be interested in people's judgements about what makes these proofs beautiful (if indeed they are-- is there a difference between a beautiful proof and a clever one?) but I don't know if that kind of discussion is appropriate for this forum.

Edit: I just want to be clear that in my question I'm really asking about proofs you'd consider to be beautiful, not just ones that are neat or accessible at the high school level. (not that the distinction is always so easy to make...)

Surely you know the books ''Math! Encounters with Undergraduates'', ''Math Talks for Undergraduates'' and ''The beauty of doing Mathematics'' by Serge Lang. They were written with your same intention.
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Giuseppe TortorellaSep 8 '11 at 11:15

54

I remember Lang giving a talk at Caltech supposedly aimed at undergraduates, but far more advanced. Lang called on a postdoc in the front row, apparently thinking he was a student, and the postdoc couldn't answer. At one point, he wrote out a complicated formula, and challenged Prof. Ramakrishnan, "Do you teach your students this?" "No." "So you see, Caltech is not better than anywhere [sic] else." After a bit more, he went back to the formula and corrected a sign. Ramakrishnan called out, "That, we teach."
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Douglas ZareSep 14 '11 at 0:38

3

Even the notion of proof may not be accessible at high school level
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Fernando MuroSep 15 '11 at 20:33

2

In the US, most high school mathematics classes are not based on proofs. Theorems are introduced without reference to proof. Only in a few limited situations are students asked to prove anything, such as in some geometry classes and some calculus classes. Instead, high school math classes concentrate on introducing objects, their properties, and how to manipulate those objects. Finding neat accessible proofs to show them is reasonable, but this is very different from finding neat accessible math to show them. E.g., I think the Chaos Game is accessible, but few students can handle the proofs.
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Douglas ZareSep 17 '11 at 0:39

12

As far as I remember, the thing I liked the most in high school maths (age of 14) was the so called Ruffini's rule: $(x-a)$ divides a polynomial $P(x)$ if and only if $P(a)=0$. It looked to me so incredibly easy and so full of consequences. I hope they still learn it with a proof.
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Pietro MajerSep 18 '11 at 20:12

46 Answers
46

Extending on Ralph's answer, there is a similar very neat proof for the formula for $Q_n:=1^2+2^2+\dots+n^2$. Write down numbers in an equilateral triangle as follows:

1
2 2
3 3 3
4 4 4 4

Now, clearly the sum of the numbers in the triangle is $Q_n$. On the other hand, if you superimpose three such triangles rotated by $120^\circ$ each, then the sum of the numbers in each position equals $2n+1$. Therefore, you can double-count $3Q_n=\frac{n(n+1)}{2}(2n+1)$. $\square$

(I first heard this proof from János Pataki).

How to prove formally that all positions sum to $2n+1$? Easy induction ("moving down-left or down-right from the topmost number does not alter the sum, since one of the three summand increases and one decreases"). This is a discrete analogue of the Euclidean geometry theorem "given a point $P$ in an equilateral triangle $ABC$, the sum of its three distances from the sides is constant" (proof: sum the areas of $APB,BPC,CPA$), which you can mention as well.

How to generalize to sum of cubes? Same trick on a tetrahedron. EDIT: there's some way to generalize it to higher dimensions, but unfortunately it's more complicated than this. See the comments below.

If you wish to tell them something about "what is the fourth dimension (for a mathematician)", this is an excellent start.

@Frederico: Careful. The sum of cubes does not correspond to a tetrahedron, but rather a pyramid. (Which does not have this nice symmetry) However the slightly modified sum $$Q_N^'=\sum_{n=1}^N n\frac{n(n+1)}{2}=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{n=1}^N n^3+\frac{1}{2}\sum_{n=1}^N n^2$$ will correspond to a tetrahedron. By using this symmetry we find $$Q_N^' = \frac{1}{4} (3N+1)\left(\frac{N(N+1)(N+2)}{6}\right)$$ since each entry will be $3N+1$ and the tetrahedral numbers are $\binom{N+3}{3}=\frac{N(N+1)(N+2)}{6}$. From here we can deduce that $$\sum_{n=1}^N n^3=\frac{(N^2+N)^2}{4}.$$
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Eric NaslundSep 16 '11 at 23:31

3

In short, you won't have a nice generalization of the solution for $n=2$ to higher dimensions. Such a generalization is not expected either since Faulhaber's Formula is not so simple.
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Eric NaslundSep 16 '11 at 23:39

1

@Eric Oh, you're right. :( What a pity, it would've been an even neater generalization.
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Federico PoloniSep 17 '11 at 9:57

1

Cool. Both the example and the follow up comments.
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ManyaSep 19 '11 at 8:30

The theorem of "friends and strangers": the Ramsey number $R(3,3)=6$.
Not only can the proof be understood by high-school students, a proof can be discovered
by students at that level via something akin to the Socratic method.
First students can establish the bound $R(3,3) > 5$ by 2-coloring the edges of $K_5$:
Then they can reason through that a 2-coloring of the edges of $K_6$ must contain a monochromatic triangle,
and so $R(3,3)=6$: in every group of six, three must be friends or three must be strangers.

After this exercise, an inductive proof of the 2-color version of Ramsey's theorem is in reach.

An added bonus here is that one quickly reaches the frontiers of mathematics: $R(5,5)$ is unknown!
It can be a revelation to students that there is a frontier of mathematics. And then one can tell the
Erdős story about $R(6,6)$, as recounted here. :-)

R(3,3)=6 sticks in my memory as the one time I managed to explain mathematics to a non-mathematical friend in the pub
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Yemon ChoiSep 8 '11 at 21:57

6

This might be apocryphal, but I've read a story about a sociologist who was surprised to discover such patterns of friendship or non-friendship among his subjects, and pondering the deep psychological origins. If true, a wonderful argument for the need for math literacy.
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Thierry ZellSep 9 '11 at 1:11

29

From Jacob Fox's lecture notes: "In the 1950’s, a Hungarian sociologist S. Szalai studied friendship relationships between children. He observed that in any group of around 20 children, he was able to ﬁnd four children who were mutual friends, or four children such that no two of them were friends. Before drawing any sociological conclusions, Szalai consulted three eminent mathematicians in Hungary at that time: Erdős, Turán and Sós. A brief discussion revealed that indeed this is a mathematical phenomenon rather than a sociological one."
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Joseph O'RourkeSep 9 '11 at 12:07

I finally tracked down where I must have read about Szalai's story for the first time: N. Alon and M. Krivelevich's article on extremal combinatorics in the Princeton's companion. Also available at: cs.tau.ac.il/~krivelev/papers.html
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Thierry ZellSep 29 '11 at 17:30

Euler's Bridges of Konigsberg problem. You can give it to students for five minutes to play with, watch them get annoyed, and then offer them the classical simple and beautiful impossibility proof. I think a lot of high school students, and even bright middle school students, would be totally convinced.

The proof, by counting inversions, that you can't interchange the 14 and 15 in the 15 puzzle, just by sliding, is accessible to high-school students, introduces important ideas, and might be found beautiful.

Going by the parameters of the question, I don't see why the proof would necessarily need to be of a sophisticated theorem. I think Euclid's proof of the infinitude of primes is beautiful and definitely accessible to a high school audience. Having given the proof, one might reflect on some of its features that generalize to many other contexts, like proof by contradiction or the ability to use a clever construction to avoid infinite enumeration.

No! Do not use this proof as an occasion to talk about proof by contradiction. Euclid's proof of this proposition was not by contradiction. The conventional practice of rearranging it into a proof by contradiction not only adds an extra complication that serves no purpose, but also leads to confusions such as the belief that if you multiply the first n primes and add 1, the result is always prime. See the paper by me and Catherine Woodgold on this: "Prime Simplicity", Mathematical Intelligencer, autumn 2009, pages 44--52.
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Michael HardySep 15 '11 at 20:03

2

It IS by contradiction, just not the kind of contradiction we have in mind.
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Mohamed Alaa El BehairySep 28 '11 at 1:35

12

To complete Michael Hardy's comment, Euclid's original proof proves the following statement: given any finite list of primes, we can extend the list by finding a prime not in the list. (Proof: multiply the primes in the list and add one; any prime factor of this new number is a prime not in the original list.) So it's a constructive way of taking a list of primes and producing another prime; we don't have to assume that the original list was "all the primes" (as in the contradiction proof) or that they were the first n primes.
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shreevatsaDec 23 '11 at 4:42

Two of my favorites: (1) The parameterization of all primitive Pythagorean triples; (2) The formula for the $n$th Fibonacci number in terms of the golden ratio $\phi = \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}$, with the corollary that $\displaystyle \lim_{n \longrightarrow \infty} F_n/F_{n-1} = \phi$.

+1 because it is so obviously technically uncomprehensible to a high school student (at myn hiogh school) yet plausibly beautiful, and beautifully plausible.
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roy smithSep 16 '11 at 5:05

13

@Roy: I disagree with you. I don't think that this is incomprehensible to high school students. The notion of knot is pretty intuitive, and it's very easy to explain what a tricoloring is. Also, the Reidemeister moves are pretty easy things to explain (ok -- I'm not talking about the actual proof that they generate everything). The most difficult aspect of the argument is probably to convince a high school student that there is need for proof. Namely, isn't the trefoil obviously non-trivial!? For that, it might be good to show them some monster unknots first...
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André HenriquesSep 16 '11 at 5:17

10

When I was shown the Reidemeister moves in school, several of my classmates and I made the objection, in essence, that it wasn't clear that they generated everything. Worse, since we didn't have topology to work with, we didn't really have a "real" definition to compare it with, so it felt to us that the real issues were being swept under the rug.
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Daniel McLauryJun 15 '12 at 18:49

Seeing the struggle of many students with standard trigonometry,
I especially like the rational parametrization of $x^2+y^2=1$
(which is equivalent to listing all Pythagorean triples) by
starting from $\sin^2\phi+\cos^2\phi=1$ and then using
$$
\sin\phi=\frac{2t}{1+t^2}, \quad
\cos\phi=\frac{1-t^2}{1+t^2}, \qquad t=\tan\frac{\phi}2.
$$
Note that the formulas are usually used in the context of
integration of rational expressions in sine and cosine.

At the same time, a more general "geometric" argument (applicable to
general quadratics), due to Bachet (1620), is still at school level.
Namely, fix a single rational point on the curve, $(x _ 0,y _ 0)$ say,
and consider the intersection points of the curve and straight
lines $y-y_0=t(x-x_0)$ with rational slope $t$ passing through the point.

A beauty here is because of variety of different geometric and analytic
methods for solving a classical arithmetic problem.

Since coordinate geometry was invented after 1620 I wonder how Bachet could have done that.
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Franz LemmermeyerSep 8 '11 at 13:23

6

Franz, I will be definitely happier if you are a little bit more constructive in your critisism: you seem to be the right person to explain why the method is usually attributed to Bachet!
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Wadim ZudilinSep 10 '11 at 6:12

I am a bit torn on this one. At least I believe before one would have to also prove, say, that the cardinality of the rationals is equal to that of the naturals (and/or related things). Because if not the 'insight' that there are more reals than naturals might seem too 'obvious' to make a proof enlightening.
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quidSep 8 '11 at 10:51

2

But the enumeration proving that the rationals are countable is also almost as beautiful as the diagonal argument! Perhaps they could be combined.
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J.C. OttemSep 8 '11 at 11:11

1

Yes, I agree; combined it could be very interesting. I should have made my agreement clearer in my first comment; sorry about that.
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quidSep 8 '11 at 11:19

1

The counting-rationals argument loses some appeal when you have to deal properly with skipping the non-reduced fractions. The visual proof of course establishes that $\mathbb{N} \times \mathbb{N} \cong \mathbb{N}$ as sets, and the countability of $\mathbb{Q}$ follows by applying an unrelated lemma on cardinality of surjective images. Glossing over a lemma like that seems exactly like what a beautiful proof (especially an exemplary proof) should avoid.
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Ryan ReichSep 9 '11 at 21:09

2

There is a simple bijection between the positive rationals and positive integers shown by the fusc function. Let $f(n)$ be the number of ways of representing $n$ as a sum of powers of $2$ with at most $2$ copies of each power. $f(4)=3$ since $4=4,2+2,2+1+1$. The sequence $\{f(n)\}_{n=0} = \{1,1,2,1,3,2,3,1,4,...\}$. Over natural numbers $n$, $g(n) = f(n-1)/f(n)$ hits each positive rational precisely once. See also the Calkin-Wilf tree, how Euclid's algorithm reduces relatively prime ordered pairs. The sequences of numerators and denominators in order are offset copies of $\{f(n)\}$.
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Douglas ZareSep 10 '11 at 21:33

@Manya My conception of beauty has changed since I first saw that proof. At that time, I did indeed consider it quite beautiful. Now, however, it's so embedded in me that it's hard to appreciate its beauty.
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Quinn CulverSep 8 '11 at 13:58

Here is another combinatorial exercise which, properly presented, does not even look like mathematics: http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=279550#p279550 . The thing I don't like about it is that the standard "gotcha" proof (explained in the usual, informal way) requires a bit too much concentration to understand - some students might fail at it and take it as an example that mathematical proofs are something one either believes or not, rather than something one can check. Of course, one can formalize the proof, but this requires quite an amount of time in a high school class.

I’ll point out that the “combinatorial exercise” is actually useful. Assume that we are given a sequence $s_1,\dots,s_n$ of symbols of arities $a_1,\dots,a_n\ge0$, respectively. It is easy to see that if we can arrange them into a well-formed term, then $\sum_ia_i=n-1$. The exercise says that, conversely, if this identity holds, then there exists a (unique) cyclic permutation of the string $s_1\dots s_n$ which is a valid term in Polish (prefix) notation. Among other things, this allows you to count the well-formed terms consisting of $n$ symbols.
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Emil JeřábekSep 8 '11 at 12:29

The Halting Problem. The first time I saw this was my senior year in high school and it completely blew me away. All you need is a notion of what an algorithm is and very basic logic (enough to recognize that assuming $A$ and deriving $\neg A$ is a contradiction)

In a similar vein, Russell's Paradox. The problem here is that you need some basic set theory, so this is more for advanced high school students.

The first beautiful proof I saw in high school (it was beautiful at the time, but now seems too trivial) was the fact that for a geometric series $a, ax, ax^2, \dots$ the sum of the first $n$ terms is $a \cdot \frac{1-x^n}{1-x}$. I thought this was cool because of all the cancellation that seems to come out of nowhere. The treatment here is nice.

@Emil: There are at least 3 points on $l$, at least two on one side of the perpendicular. Call the closer of these two $B$ and the farther of these two $C$. Now let $m$ denote the line $PC$, then the pair $(B,m)$ has a smaller distance than $(P,l)$. Contradiction.
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GH from MOSep 8 '11 at 12:08

1

Thanks, now I got it. I misread it first.
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Emil JeřábekSep 8 '11 at 12:36

One of the keys to making a proof accessible to high school students (or just non-mathematicians) is to make the answer relevant. This gives a dual responsibility, to ensure that the theorem is motivated and that the proof is accessible. The proof of the infinity of the primes has been mentioned already and is a fantastic example. You can lead students in to it using the (almost trivial) proof that there is no largest integer.

Another example is the classification of the regular polyhedra. With good students and models you can even lead them to the proof there there are at most 6 regular polytopes in 4d (actually showing they all exist is a little harder).

Keeping with polyhedra, the Euler characteristic is also powerful. Start with balloons and get the students to draw lines freely so you get a tiling. Then get them to count faces, vertices and edges. David Eppstein collected 19 proofs to choose from, several of which would be perfect for non-mathematicians: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/euler/

As a final example (and to show that it does not have to be deep mathematics to motivate) you can consider the question of blocking a square on a chess board and filling the remainder with tromioes. It starts with a puzzle, you can get people to play with, and leads to a lovely induction proof: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Games/TriggTromino.shtml

Actually polyominoes are a fantastic source of many other fun, non-trivial but accessible proofs.

2) Another elementary problem is the following: Is it possible to cover a checkerboard from which one white and one black square have been removed with dominoes?
To show that this is possible run through the board in a cyclical way. Observe that on this path between a white and a black square are an even number of squares.
Since I don't know how to make figures I indicate such a path for a 4x4-board: ((1,1),(1,2),(1,3),(1,4),(2,4),(2,3),(2,2),(3,2),(3,3),(3,4),(4,4),(4,3),(4,2),(4,1),(3,1),(2,1)).

I would also add the (checkerboard) proof that if you remove opposite corners from the 8x8 board, the resulting figure can't be tiled with dominoes; if presented without the board coloration it's not immediately obvious, and its proof provides a wonderful a-ha moment that should be easily accessible for high school students (if not earlier). These (along with the various graph-theory problems) also have the advantage of showing students that mathematics is about more than just numbers.
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Steven StadnickiSep 8 '11 at 21:31

The formula $1 + 2 + ... + n = n(n+1)/2$ can be proved on middle school level: Assume first n is even. Then there are n/2 pairs (1,n), (2,n-1), ..., (n/2,n/2+1) those sum is always n+1. Thus the overall sum is n/2*(n+1). The case when n is odd can be treated in the same manner.

Actually this proof would be more approriate for primary school (age 10 or so). Smarter kids (like Gauss) figure it out themselves.
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GH from MOSep 8 '11 at 12:04

2

I prefer the "visual proof" because you don't have to reason, you just "see" it: put 1 little square in the first raw, two in the second,... n in the last raw, and you've obtained a figure of which you can easily compute the area as: (AreaOfBigSquare-AreaOfSquaresOnTheDiagonal)/2+ AreaOfSquaresOnTheDiagonal=$(n^2-n)/2+n=n(n+1)/2$. Of course to pass from $(n^2-n)/2+n$ to $n(n+1)/2$ the kid must have learned some "algebra".
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QfwfqSep 8 '11 at 13:48

1

No, the best proof is the visual one where you draw a triangle with 1, 2, ..., n circles in each row, and another row below the last with n + 1 circles. Anything in the smaller triangle can be specified by two "coordinates" in the last row, obtained by dropping down parallel to the sides. Thus, $\binom{n + 1}{2}$ using the definition of "n + 1 choose 2"; to get a formula for that number you could use the argument in Dan's comment. This one is nice because it is both visual and a bijective proof, rather than computational.
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Ryan ReichSep 8 '11 at 15:31

3

How about this: write the numbers from $1$ to $n$ in row, then write them again in a row below, but backwards. Add up the columns, to get $n+1$ each time, so $n(n+1)$ in total, because there are $n$ columns. Divide by $2$.
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euklid345Sep 9 '11 at 4:22

I suggest Euler's polyeder formula with application to the Platonic solids.
One first observes that instead of polyeders one can consider graphs in the plane, counting the unbounded region as a face. One observes next that one can just as well allow the edges to be pieces of curves. Then one observes that the formula $F - E + V = 2$ is preserved if one edge or one vertex is added, thus the formula is proved by induction. Then use the formula to prove that there are no regular polyeders except the five Platonic solids as follows: faces can only be triangles, squares or pentagons, edges are always common to exactly two faces, and for the number of faces that meet in a vertex there are a number of possibilities that one checks. For each case, $E$ and $V$ can be expressed in terms of $F$, and the formula gives the possible values of $F$.

For someone in high school, I think it's good to prove that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is $\pi$ if they don't know why. Personally, I was never shown why this fact is true, and I feel that it's generally a bad idea to not know why something in math is true, especially when the answer is pretty. My favorite proof is to think about how the normal vector changes as you walk around the triangle -- it's nice because it generalizes to other shapes (which may not even be polygons).

This topological proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra is accessible to high school students, particularly those at the precalculus level.

There are two major problems with this. First, while the winding number is intuitive, it takes effort to define it rigorously. Second, you also want to establish the basic property that the winding number doesn't change as you deform a curve without going over the origin, which again is difficult to establish rigorously without topology. Without these details, you might call this a hand-waving argument instead of a proof. It's good to give references to where these results will be established rigorously, and to give arguments for other results which are more complete.

Nevertheless, I like presenting this proof for several reasons. I think it's beautiful. Geometrically, what $x\mapsto x^n$ does to the complex plane is easy to understand, but many students have little intuition about what this map does, only what polynomials look like on the real line. So, this argument doesn't just say that the statement is true, it is illuminating. The fundamental theorem of algebra is also a result students encountered in algebra, but they usually don't know why it's called a theorem. This is also an opportunity to talk a little about what is studied in more advanced areas of mathematics. It can lead into discussions of topology or the difficulty solving polynomials by radicals.

i suggest the proof archimedes wanted on his tombstone and its relatives. i.e. since two solids with the same horizontal slice area at every height have the same volume, hence by pythagoras, the volume of a cylinder equals the sum of the volumes of an inscribed cone and an inscribed solid hemisphere.

to generalize this, the volume generated by revolving a solid hemisphere around a planar axis in 4 space equal that generated by revolving a cylinder minus that generated by revolving a cone. Using the fact that the center of gravity of a cone is 1/4 the way up from the base, one obtains the volume of a 4-sphere, as pi^2/2 R^4.

a generalization of the first computation is that of the volume of a bicylinder (intersection of two perpendicular cylinders), since it is the difference of the volumes of a cube containing the bicylinder and a square based double pyramid also inscribed in the cube.

I find these beautiful, but of course that is subjective.

I also like euclid's argument for pythagoras, and for constructing a regular pentagon, but they are hard to reproduce here briefly.

You should certainly look at the two books by Ross Honsberger, "Mathematical Gems I" and "Mathematical Gems II". A favourite example of mine the proof due to Conway that there are configurations of checkers below the half plane on an infinite board that allow you to move a checker 4 rows into the upper half plane, but not five rows.

The negative result is an ingenious argument using nothing more than the quadratic formula, but provides a great example of to apply mathematics in unexpected contexts.

Minkowsky's Theorem (every convex region in the plane of area greater than 4 that's symmetric about the origin contains a lattice point other than (0,0)) is not at all obvious (are you sure you can't squeeze a sufficiently large "blob of irrational slope" in there?) but has a beautiful, simple, and surprising geometric proof.

Do you want to give a hint about the proof?
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ManyaNov 19 '11 at 12:22

2

Draw the region $R$ in the plane. Cut the plane into 2x2 squares by cutting along the lines $x=2i$ and $y=2j$ for all integers $i,j$; each square contains some part of $R$ (possible none.) Stack the squares on top of each other. Since $R$ has area greater than 4, there exist two squares whose parts of $R$ overlap. Write down what this means algebraically, apply symmetry and convexity, and construct the nontrivial lattice point.
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user6542Nov 20 '11 at 11:14

Those are pretty nice, and can be done at a fairly low level (say, from 12 years old onwards) :

The proof of the formula "half base times height" for the area of a triangle, by first considering a right triangle and completing a rectangle, then considering an arbitrary triangle and breaking it in two along an height (two cases : inside(+) or outside(-)) : it is a nice example of how mathematicians treat the general case by reduction to particular cases ;

Euclid's proof of the pythagorean theorem using the previous formula, as in this animation.

I like the lovely theorem in 19th century Euclidean Geometry as follows.

Let ABC be a triangle. let D,E,F be points on BC,CA,AB respectively. Then the circumcircles of AFE, BDF, CDE meet at a point.

I like this because the proof uses the property of the angles of cyclic quadrilaterals, and its converse. Also if one wants to convince students of the necessity of proof, then one should start with a result which is surprising.

It is a good thing that this situation can we worked on for more implications. Let P,Q,R be the centres of the three circles just given. Then the triangle PQR is similar to the triangle ABC.

For all these reasons I think it is a pity that some of Euclidean Geometry is not in University courses, or often school courses, in order to acquaint students with something important in our mathematical heritage. Should a student get a degree in maths without knowing why the angle in a semicircle is a right angle?

There is a very elegant proof that there exists no continuous injection from the plane into the real line. The proof can basically be given by drawing a picture on the blackboard.

Suppose there is such an injection $f$. Let $x$ and $y$ be distinct points in the plane and let $g_1$ and $g_2$ be paths from $x$ to $y$ such that $g_1(r_1)\neq g_2(r_2)$ for $r_1,r_2\in (0,1)$. Now this implies that $f\circ g_1((0,1))\cap f\circ g_2((0,1))=\emptyset$, contradicting the intermediate value theorem.

There is also a proof by Alain Connes, based on affine geometry techniques. Of course it is a bit more technical, but again it involves math that doesn't go much beyond the high school level, and could be appreciated by the most gifted students

Thanks. Actually this example was given by Rota in a famous paper about the phenomenology of mathematical beauty as an example of a theorem that is surprising but not beautiful (in response to Hardy's claim that beauty arises from a feeling of surprise.) Of course, it is open to debate... Thanks for the Connes reference, I didn't know about that.
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ManyaSep 8 '11 at 11:40

1

See also Conway's proof (linked at the Wikipedia article).
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Todd Trimble♦Sep 8 '11 at 12:05

1

@Manya: Well, I guess it's a matter of taste. Personally, I do find this theorem beautiful. Thank you for the remark
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Francesco PolizziSep 8 '11 at 12:40

1

But the question was asking for a beautiful proof, not a beautiful theorem.
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euklid345Sep 9 '11 at 4:51

1

P.S. (@ eucklid) Good point. Rota actually claimed that neither the theorem nor any of the proofs of it (thus far?) are beautiful.
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ManyaSep 19 '11 at 8:16

In the general game "Poset Chomp" the first player always has a winning strategy. The proof is a one-line strategy stealing argument, hence nonconstructive. In fact, a winning strategy is unknown in most cases, which makes the result interesting and mysterious. For a good quick account see here.

@GH: I'm aware of the history of chomp and of simple posets and the strategy-stealing argument. Have you worked with middle school students who were not selected to be competitors in a math competition? What percentage do you think will understand and be impressed by a nonconstructive existence result about an abstract game they have not seen before? When I tell members of the general public about mathematics, I try to relate it to concrete objects and situations I think they know beforehand.
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Douglas ZareSep 9 '11 at 0:08

Why not some elementary theorems of Euclidan geometry? As I recall, the more general and fundamental theorems were just taken as given in my schooling, but I think many of them can be given accessible and beautiful proofs. Here are some good ones:

1) The Pythagorean theorem. (many lovely proofs)

2) Parallelograms having congruent bases and heights have the same area. (Euclid's proof is pretty.)

3) Use 2 to derive that similar triangles have corresponding sides in common proportion.

What I absolutely dislike about 4) is how it cements the common misconception that mathematics is about giving painstakingly difficult proofs to intuitively obvious statements. Part 3) is only slightly better in this aspect. The rest are pretty good.
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darij grinbergSep 9 '11 at 11:50

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The arguments are not so painful. #4 merely involves some observations relating the center of a circle, isoceles triangles, and the fact that two distinct lines intersect at most once. In any case I disagree with the sentiment. Part of the mathematical way of thinking is resisting the urge to accept things just because they seem obvious at first, and always demand that your knowledge but put on a firmer footing. I believe this is the essential "life lesson" students should take from mathematics. Sadly it is not being imparted in today's secondary schools much.
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Monroe EskewSep 9 '11 at 19:00

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I disagree. In school, mathematical proofs are like castles built on sand - not only do most students never realize what they are for, but they often tend to be sloppy right up to flawed (not "flawed" in the sense of "informal", but flawed in the sense of arguments that wouldn't be accepted as a correct proof even in a published paper), and the idea that proofs can be interesting is totally missing (at best they are considered a necessary evil by students and teachers alike). Adding to this a "revelation" that mathematicians prove trivial things in complicated (for students, at least) ...
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darij grinbergSep 9 '11 at 21:04

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... ways doesn't help. In reality, mathematics is maybe 1% about proving things that are intuitively obvious (even topology), and 99% about proving things that are either surprising or seem to be useful in proving surprising things. Skepticism is a good life lesson, but it is better taught by providing examples of false intuitively obvious assertions with counterexamples than by providing examples of correct intuitively obvious assertions with their seemingly redundant proofs.
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darij grinbergSep 9 '11 at 21:07